Customer stories

Hybrid cloud storage blog

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<title>Hybrid Cloud Storage</title>
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<link>https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/cis</link>
<description>Integrating cloud storage services with on-premises enterprise storage</description>
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<title>Deploy Global File Sharing for Collaboration Using Microsoft Azure StorSimple and Talon CloudFAST™</title>
<link>https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/cis/2016/04/27/deploy-global-file-sharing-for-collaboration-using-microsoft-azure-storsimple-and-talon-cloudfast/</link>
<comments>https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/cis/2016/04/27/deploy-global-file-sharing-for-collaboration-using-microsoft-azure-storsimple-and-talon-cloudfast/#respond</comments>
<pubDate>Wed, 27 Apr 2016 23:18:51 +0000</pubDate>
<dc:creator><![CDATA[Hal Nunn]]></dc:creator>
<category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category>
<guid isPermaLink="false">https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/cis/?p=265</guid>
<description><![CDATA[By Meghan Liese, Senior Product Manager, StorSimple Industry analysts estimate around 80% of an organization’s data is unstructured and growing at a rapid rate. Enterprises are looking to leverage the cloud to simplify IT infrastructure and scale IT to align with business needs while lowering costs related to storing, protecting and recovering their data. Microsoft...]]></description>
<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><em>By Meghan Liese, Senior Product Manager, StorSimple</em></p>
<p>Industry analysts estimate around 80% of an organization’s data is unstructured and growing at a rapid rate. Enterprises are looking to leverage the cloud to simplify IT infrastructure and scale IT to align with business needs while lowering costs related to storing, protecting and recovering their data.</p>
<p>Microsoft Azure StorSimple provides enterprises with a hybrid cloud storage solution that helps customers manage data growth by simplifying storage infrastructure and seamlessly scaling primary storage, data protection and disaster recovery using Microsoft Azure. Enterprises using the solution have been able to lower total storage costs by up to 80%.</p>
<p>As enterprises increasingly become geo-dispersed, it is a challenge for them to not only collaborate efficiently across a number of locations, but also ensure that the large amount of data generated on a daily basis is appropriately stored, protected, and recoverable.</p>
<p>Typically, they independently deploy infrastructure at each remote or branch office, to provide adequate local performance, but this burdens them with rising costs and complexity associated with data protection and disaster recovery across each location. The lack of data consolidation results in lost business productivity due to duplicate file versions, data loss/conflict, and file integrity issues.</p>
<p>A file sharing solution using StorSimple and Talon CloudFAST™ enables customers to scale their collaborative environment across the globe. CloudFAST<strong>™ </strong>exposes StorSimple hosted SMB file shares across numerous remote and branch offices while delivering real-time collaboration. Its global file locking technology guarantees data consistency, coherency and integrity. By caching local data and maintaining a single copy of primary data on StorSimple, the solution minimizes IT infrastructure required in remote/branch offices. StorSimple hybrid cloud storage provides integrated data protection for the file shares using cloud snapshots that are stored in Azure.</p>
<p>An illustrative topology of StorSimple and Talon CloudFAST<strong>™</strong> is show below.</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p style="text-align: left"><a href="https://msdnshared.blob.core.windows.net/media/2016/04/Talon_Cloud_Fast_875width.png"><img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-325" src="https://msdnshared.blob.core.windows.net/media/2016/04/Talon_Cloud_Fast_875width.png" alt="Talon_Cloud_Fast_875width" width="874" height="380" /></a></p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p>Check out the Microsoft webinar, <a href="https://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032745634&amp;culture=en-US">How To Modernize Datacenter and Branch File Storage while Cutting Storage Costs by Up To 70%</a> , to hear Michael Benjamin, Enterprise IT Program Manager at Cimpress (Vistaprint), discuss the path that lead them to implement StorSimple and Talon CloudFAST™ across their enterprise (the webinar is also available at Microsoft.com/storsimple).</p>
<p>Talon recently announced preferential pricing for StorSimple customers through the Azure Marketplace in order to provide on-demand purchase and deployment of Talon CloudFAST for StorSimple. To get started with StorSimple hybrid cloud storage and Talon CloudFAST™ for your global collaboration needs, request a demo <a href="http://microsoft.com/storsimple">here</a>.</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
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<title>Microsoft Announces General Availability for the Microsoft Azure StorSimple Virtual Array</title>
<link>https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/cis/2016/03/02/microsoft-announces-general-availability-for-the-microsoft-azure-storsimple-virtual-array/</link>
<comments>https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/cis/2016/03/02/microsoft-announces-general-availability-for-the-microsoft-azure-storsimple-virtual-array/#comments</comments>
<pubDate>Wed, 02 Mar 2016 11:00:43 +0000</pubDate>
<dc:creator><![CDATA[Hal Nunn]]></dc:creator>
<category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[8000 series]]></category>
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<category><![CDATA[Azure Storage]]></category>
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<description><![CDATA[March 2, 2016 By Meghan Liese, Senior Product Marketing Manager, StorSimple &#160; Today&#8217;s enterprises are embracing digital transformation and are strategically defining revenue generating experiences as a key strategy to their growth. A byproduct of this rapid transformation is massive amounts of business data that is experiencing a double digit increase every year. This has...]]></description>
<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p style="margin:0in 0in 8pt;"><span style="font-size:12pt;"><span style="font-family:Calibri;"><strong>March 2, 2016</strong><br /></span></span></p>
<p style="margin:0in 0in 8pt;"><span style="font-size:12pt;"><span style="font-family:Calibri;"><strong>By Meghan Liese, Senior Product Marketing Manager, StorSimple</strong><br /></span></span></p>
<p style="margin:0in 0in 8pt;"><span style="font-size:12pt;"><span style="font-family:Calibri;">&nbsp;</span></span></p>
<p style="margin:0in 0in 8pt;"><span style="font-size:12pt;"><span style="font-family:Calibri;">Today&rsquo;s enterprises are embracing digital transformation and are strategically defining revenue generating experiences as a key strategy to their growth. </span></span><span style="font-family:Calibri;"><span style="font-size:12pt;">A byproduct of this rapid transformation is massive amounts of business data that is experiencing a double digit increase every year.</span><span style="font-size:14pt;"> </span><span style="font-size:12pt;">This has directly resulted in rising storage costs, growing storage infrastructure footprint and increasing complexity of storage and data management within enterprises of all sizes. This is creating significant hurdles for IT to scale efficiently in support of the growing demands of the business. </span></span></p>
<p style="margin:0in 0in 8pt;"><span style="font-size:12pt;"><span style="font-family:Calibri;">However, the time has come to transition the focus of IT from infrastructure management to business agility, where the goal is not just connecting storage and server infrastructure, but rather connecting data to the users and applications quickly and efficiently. A key to this transition is the adoption of the cloud. </span></span></p>
<p style="margin:0in 0in 8pt;"><span style="font-family:Calibri;"><span style="font-size:12pt;">With Microsoft Azure StorSimple, customers have reduced their storage costs, eliminated infrastructure sprawl, simplified data management and increased IT agility to help transform their businesses.&nbsp; &ldquo;Prior to</span><span style="font-size:small;"> </span><span style="font-size:12pt;">StorSimple, we simply added more and more storage to accommodate growing data,&rdquo; says Lee Bingham, Head of IT for leading European fashion designer Paul Smith. &nbsp;&ldquo;Now we are using StorSimple to create policies that automatically archive data to Azure storage in the cloud if it hasn&rsquo;t been accessed in 12 months.&rdquo;</span></span></p>
<p style="margin:0in 0in 8pt;"><span style="font-size:12pt;"><span style="font-family:Calibri;">Today we are announcing the general availability of the StorSimple Virtual Array, as part of the overall StorSimple product offering for Microsoft Azure. The StorSimple Virtual Array provides hybrid cloud storage using a VM that can be run on Hyper-V or VMware hypervisors and supports either a Network Attached Storage (NAS) or Storage Area Network (SAN) configuration. The StorSimple Virtual Array also delivers integrated primary storage, data protection, archiving, and disaster recovery capabilities in a single, easy to deploy solution designed for small, remote environments where there is minimal IT infrastructure and management. </span></span></p>
<p style="margin:0in 0in 8pt;"><span style="font-size:12pt;"><span style="font-family:Calibri;"><a href="https://msdnshared.blob.core.windows.net/media/TNBlogsFS/prod.evol.blogs.technet.com/CommunityServer.Blogs.Components.WeblogFiles/00/00/00/97/25/SAN%20StorSimple%20Diagram.jpg" original-url="http://blogs.technet.com/cfs-file.ashx/__key/communityserver-blogs-components-weblogfiles/00-00-00-97-25/SAN-StorSimple-Diagram.jpg"><img alt=" " src="https://msdnshared.blob.core.windows.net/media/TNBlogsFS/prod.evol.blogs.technet.com/CommunityServer.Blogs.Components.WeblogFiles/00/00/00/97/25/SAN%20StorSimple%20Diagram.jpg" original-url="http://blogs.technet.com/resized-image.ashx/__size/550x0/__key/communityserver-blogs-components-weblogfiles/00-00-00-97-25/SAN-StorSimple-Diagram.jpg" border="0" /></a></span></span></p>
<p style="margin:0in 0in 8pt;"><span style="font-size:12pt;"><span style="font-family:Calibri;"><img alt=" " /></span></span></p>
<p style="margin:0in 0in 8pt;"><span style="font-size:12pt;"><span style="font-family:Calibri;">With the StorSimple Virtual Array, customers no longer need to centralize data protection and disaster recovery at the main datacenter. Instead, the StorSimple Virtual Array allows customers to have a highly scalable, consistent, and cost-effective approach to managing data growth and data protection across all their environments, including remote and branch offices. Rand Morimoto, President of Convergent Computing, an early adopter of the StorSimple Virtual Array explains that, &ldquo;Microsoft has helped us consolidate several storage solutions into a comprehensive strategy that includes high speed appliance-based storage, versatile and cost effective Virtual Array technology with a hybrid integration of our storage needs on-premises&nbsp;and the agility of extending storage and backup into the cloud.&rdquo;</span></span></p>
<p style="margin:0in 0in 8pt;"><span style="font-size:12pt;"><span style="font-family:Calibri;"><a href="https://msdnshared.blob.core.windows.net/media/TNBlogsFS/prod.evol.blogs.technet.com/CommunityServer.Blogs.Components.WeblogFiles/00/00/00/97/25/Azure%20Map.jpg" original-url="http://blogs.technet.com/cfs-file.ashx/__key/communityserver-blogs-components-weblogfiles/00-00-00-97-25/Azure-Map.jpg"><img alt=" " src="https://msdnshared.blob.core.windows.net/media/TNBlogsFS/prod.evol.blogs.technet.com/CommunityServer.Blogs.Components.WeblogFiles/00/00/00/97/25/Azure%20Map.jpg" original-url="http://blogs.technet.com/resized-image.ashx/__size/550x0/__key/communityserver-blogs-components-weblogfiles/00-00-00-97-25/Azure-Map.jpg" border="0" /></a></span></span></p>
<p style="margin:0in 0in 8pt;"><span style="font-size:12pt;"><span style="font-family:Calibri;">The StorSimple Virtual Array is available to all Microsoft Azure customers with an Enterprise Agreement. </span></span><span style="font-size:12pt;"><span style="font-family:Calibri;">The StorSimple Virtual Array is managed by the StorSimple Manager, which provides a single point of management along with other StorSimple solutions.</span></span></p>
<p style="margin:0in 0in 8pt;"><span style="font-size:12pt;"><span style="font-family:Calibri;">With today&rsquo;s announcements, we are excited that more enterprises can adopt a hybrid storage strategy based on StorSimple to transform their businesses &ndash; by reducing costs, simplifying IT processes and helping increase IT agility in support of their business goals. </span></span></p>
<p style="margin:0in 0in 8pt;"><span style="font-size:11pt;"><span style="font-family:Calibri;">According to leading storage analyst firm Taneja Group, &ldquo;Microsoft Azure StorSimple efficiently extends the local storage infrastructure into the cloud. With the Virtual Array, StorSimple does so much more.&nbsp; Now the enterprise can bring remote and branch offices into the fold with virtualized StorSimple arrays that can run from remote office premises, or in case of a disaster, from Azure. Virtual Array rounds out the StorSimple product family and lets Microsoft broadly expand its customer base to ROBO locations,&ldquo; states Arun Taneja, Founder, Taneja Group</span></span></p></p>
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<title>Data Mobility: Defying The Law of Data Gravity With StorSimple</title>
<link>https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/cis/2015/10/22/data-mobility-defying-the-law-of-data-gravity-with-storsimple/</link>
<comments>https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/cis/2015/10/22/data-mobility-defying-the-law-of-data-gravity-with-storsimple/#respond</comments>
<pubDate>Thu, 22 Oct 2015 11:49:37 +0000</pubDate>
<dc:creator><![CDATA[Hal Nunn]]></dc:creator>
<category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[8000 series]]></category>
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<description><![CDATA[October 22, 2015 By Tom Trainer, StorSimple Product Marketing Lately, I have been thinking a lot about Microsoft Azure StorSimple 8000 series and a whole lot about hybrid cloud storage and the revolutionary innovation that StorSimple has delivered to the storage market.&#160; I&#8217;ve also been thinking about data and how data is very much like...]]></description>
<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><span style="font-family:times new roman,times;font-size:medium;"><b><span>October 22, 2015 </span></b></span></p>
<p><span style="font-family:times new roman,times;font-size:medium;"><b><span>By Tom Trainer, StorSimple Product Marketing</span></b></span></p>
<p><span style="font-family:times new roman,times;font-size:medium;"><b><span><br /></span></b></span><span style="font-family:times new roman,times;font-size:medium;">Lately, I have been thinking a lot about Microsoft Azure StorSimple 8000 series and a whole lot about hybrid cloud storage and the revolutionary innovation that StorSimple has delivered to the storage market.&nbsp; I&rsquo;ve also been thinking about data and how data is very much like gravity, although not in the traditional &lsquo;data gravity&rsquo; sense, but more from the difficulty of accessing and moving data. </span></p>
<p><span style="font-family:times new roman,times;font-size:medium;">For a while now, there has been an industry notion around &lsquo;data gravity&rsquo; and how data, as it grows over time (massively in many cases), tends to drive the development of additional applications and services to mine and leverage the value of data. It appears that this notion is correct thinking as it pertains to data growth in a datacenter and in the cloud; yet, as there is no slowdown of data growth in the datacenter, there remains a big gap in being able to quickly move data to the cloud from a datacenter where it can be more cost effectively and time efficiently analyzed. I believe the fundamental nature of data, as it grows and as it ages in the datacenter, is for it to become heavier, growing larger and becoming more difficult to move with each passing day and especially when it comes to moving data to the cloud. This, in its own right, can be considered as the</span><span style="font-family:times new roman,times;font-size:medium;"> <b><i>law of data gravity</i></b>.&nbsp;&nbsp;</span></p>
<p><span style="font-family:times new roman,times;font-size:medium;">As an example, burgeoning data stores within a datacenter grow ever more cumbersome to manage, maintain, protect and move &#8211; mainly due to cost, and strained human resources.&nbsp; Storing of data that is aging is an expensive proposition (i.e. manpower, expensive disk storage systems, costly and slow network backup, unreliable tape backups, on-going maintenance, and long refresh cycles). Further adding to the problem is the ever growing and critical need to rapidly create development and test (dev-test) environments for developing new applications, patching and testing, and rapid data analysis and making timely, well-informed business decisions.&nbsp; </span></p>
<p><span style="font-family:times new roman,times;font-size:medium;">There is no doubt that a business can thrive when it can obtain quick access to data and make factual, data driven, decisions that affect the top and bottom line.&nbsp; Take for example a national department store chain that, based on rapid data analysis, sees certain products selling faster in one geography versus another.&nbsp; The department store chain can make a rapid decision to move inventory quickly in order to capitalize on sales and reduce their costly inventory &ndash; this sounds great, however it is becoming increasing more difficult for business to maintain the large data stores and to quickly create the innovative dev-test environments they require.&nbsp; In a nut shell, the costs are going up and so is the time to create a complex test environment.&nbsp; In fact, we have one Fortune 500 customer that was spending a tremendous amount of money, and literally suffering though days to weeks of build-out time of a separate storage infrastructure, just to create their data analysis environment &#8211; and then they had to move their gravity bound data into the test environment.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-family:times new roman,times;font-size:medium;">With innovative technology in StorSimple hybrid cloud storage, we have been able to help customers not only lower the cost of storage, more effectively manage data growth, <span style="text-decoration:line-through;">and</span> data protection and disaster recovery, we have also been able to address the gravitation nature of their data.&nbsp; In essence we are able to help them tier data and move their growing aging and achievable data to the cloud at lower costs than keeping this data in the datacenter or on some unreliable media or at a far away and hard to access location, and we keep the data safe and reliably accessible so that it can be mined and analyzed. Plus, we create cloud snapshots in Azure where it can be rapidly accessed and analyzed in support our customer&rsquo;s business requirements for faster data analysis and business decision making.&nbsp;&nbsp; </span></p>
<p><span style="font-family:times new roman,times;font-size:medium;">Let&rsquo;s revisit the previous example where I mentioned our Fortune 500 customer who was suffering through high costs and days to weeks to build out their dev-test environment.&nbsp; With StorSimple in their datacenter, along with StorSimple Virtual Appliance and their data analysis applications running in Azure, they have dramatically cut their dev-test costs and build-out times from days to weeks down to mere minutes.&nbsp; Now, they can create as many dev-test environments as they like.&nbsp; <span style="text-decoration:line-through;">T</span> they have moved from days to weeks to create a single dev-test environment, to being able to create and run as many dev-test environments as they like, as often as they like, with fast access to near real-time data.&nbsp; Additionally, they can now take advantage of Azure based analytics such as eDiscovery, Data Analysis, Machine Learning and more. So, not only have we addressed the heavy gravitational nature of data &ndash; we have actually enabled real-time data to, in a phrase, achieve escape velocity from the datacenter!&nbsp; This is very powerful!</span></p>
<p><span style="font-family:times new roman,times;font-size:medium;"><span style="font-family:times new roman,times;font-size:medium;"><b><span><img alt=" " src="https://msdnshared.blob.core.windows.net/media/TNBlogsFS/prod.evol.blogs.technet.com/CommunityServer.Blogs.Components.WeblogFiles/00/00/00/97/25/Shuttle%20Pic.jpg" original-url="http://blogs.technet.com/resized-image.ashx/__size/550x0/__key/communityserver-blogs-components-weblogfiles/00-00-00-97-25/Shuttle-Pic.jpg" border="0" /></span></b></span><br /></span></p>
<p><span style="font-family:times new roman,times;font-size:medium;"><span>How do we do all of this?&nbsp; As I mentioned previously, it&rsquo;s all in the innovation built in to StorSimple.&nbsp; We&rsquo;ve not only been </span><span style="color:#0563c1;"><a href="http://blogs.msdn.com/b/microsoft_press/archive/2013/07/26/free-ebook-rethinking-enterprise-storage-a-hybrid-cloud-model.aspx">Rethinking Enterprise Storage</a></span><span>, we have now rethought it and are deploying enterprise-class hybrid cloud storage that bridges the datacenter and the cloud. StorSimple customers leverage our unique and industry leading data tiering and Cloud Snapshot capabilities, as well as other built-in technologies, that enable them defy the law of data gravity and to reach data escape velocity, thereby enabling them to revolutionize the way they think of their data and what they can do with it. Now, their data is more agile, retained it at a much lower cost and is more easily managed and protected.&nbsp; StorSimple helps give them an even greater competitive edge in their markets.&nbsp; </span></span></p>
<p><span style="font-family:times new roman,times;font-size:medium;"><span>To learn how you too can overcome the gravitational nature of your data and enable it achieve escape velocity to help your organization soar, </span><a href="http://www.controlyourstorage.com/#requestDemo"><span style="color:#0563c1;">request a demo here</span><span>.</span></a></span></p>
<p><span style="font-family:times new roman,times;font-size:medium;">I plan to write a series of blogs on data mobility, with exciting examples of how our customers are defying the gravitation nature of data and achieving data escape velocity, illustrating how their organizations and business are thriving by leveraging StorSimple and our uniquely innovative technology &ndash; be sure to check often for updates. </span></p>
<p><span style="font-family:times new roman,times;font-size:medium;">Tom</span></p>
<p><span style="font-family:times new roman,times;font-size:medium;"><b><span><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:medium;"> </span><br /></span></b></span></p></p>
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<title>StorSimple: Acceptance, Innovation and Update 1 Release</title>
<link>https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/cis/2015/05/27/storsimple-acceptance-innovation-and-update-1-release/</link>
<comments>https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/cis/2015/05/27/storsimple-acceptance-innovation-and-update-1-release/#respond</comments>
<pubDate>Wed, 27 May 2015 10:47:49 +0000</pubDate>
<dc:creator><![CDATA[Hal Nunn]]></dc:creator>
<category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[8000 series]]></category>
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<category><![CDATA[StorSimple]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[tiering]]></category>
<guid isPermaLink="false">https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/cis/2015/05/27/storsimple-acceptance-innovation-and-update-1-release/</guid>
<description><![CDATA[May 27, 2015 By Guru Pangal, General Manager, Hybrid Cloud Storage &#38; Data Protection Today I am excited to announce our first major software release for the StorSimple 8000 series since its launch last summer &#8211; StorSimple 8000 series Update 1. In this new release we have included StorSimple deployments in Azure Government clouds and...]]></description>
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<p><b><span style="font-family:Calibri;font-size:medium;">May 27, 2015</span></b></p>
<p><b><span style="font-family:Calibri;font-size:medium;">By Guru Pangal, General Manager, Hybrid Cloud Storage &amp; Data Protection</span></b></p>
</p>
<p><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:small;">Today I am excited to announce our first major software release for the StorSimple 8000 series since its launch last summer &ndash; StorSimple 8000 series Update 1. </span><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:small;">In this new release we have included StorSimple deployments in Azure Government clouds and other cloud connectivity; an SDK support for Azure PowerShell and Zone Redundant Storage (ZRS) support; and data migration tools that ease the way for customers upgrading from 5000/7000 series to StorSimple 8000 series.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:small;">From a multi-cloud support perspective, StorSimple 8000 series is now generally available in <a title="Azure Government" href="http://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/features/gov/" target="_blank"><span style="color:#0563c1;">Azure Government</span></a>, which is a physical and network-isolated instance of Microsoft Azure committed to meeting rigorous compliance requirements and U.S. government policies. </span><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:small;"><span>Customers&nbsp;can run a commandlet to set the cloud platform on their StorSimple device to Azure Government, prior to registering their StorSimple device on the Azure Government Portal. By setting this option, all data, tiered backups and StorSimple Virtual Appliances will be stored in the Azure Government cloud, and managed through the Azure Government Portal. Setting this option also enables the </span><a href="https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc750357.aspx" target="_blank"><span style="color:#0563c1;">FIPS mode</span></a><span> of operation on the StorSimple device. I am also pleased to announce that the StorSimple 8000 series cryptographic modules have completed validation to the Federal Information Processing Standard &#8211; FIPS 140-2. </span></span></p>
<p><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:small;">StorSimple 8000 series also now enables support for customers to define other cloud providers for their backend cloud storage, demonstrating our commitment to provide our customers with flexibility and choice in the cloud. Customers can use Amazon S3, Amazon S3 with RRS, and OpenStack-based clouds, such as HPCS (a cloud solution available from Hewlett-Packard that offers public, private, hybrid, and managed private clouds based on OpenStack technology), as the backend storage for their StorSimple solution.&nbsp; Management of StorSimple data, backups, and other management workflows will continue to be done from the Azure StorSimple service.&nbsp;<br />&nbsp;<br /> </span><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:small;"><span>Our migration tools enable our customers to upgrade from a StorSimple 5000/7000 Series solution to a StorSimple 8000 Series solution while maintaining their data in-place. Migration is easily orchestrated using a set of Azure PowerShell commandlets.<br /></span></span></p>
<p><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:small;"><span>We are starting to add more automation to StorSimple and with the SDK for Azure PowerShell, administrators can use a set of StorSimple Azure PowerShell commands to automate management tasks. For a set of supported StorSimple commandlets, please visit the </span><a title="Azure StorSimple Cmdlets" href="https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/azure/dn920427.aspx?WT.mc_id=azurebg_email_Trans_671"><span>Azure StorSimple Cmdlets</span></a><span> documentation webpage </span><span style="color:#0563c1;"><a href="/controlpanel/blogs/posteditor.aspx/&lt;span%20style=&#39;color:%20#0563c1;&#39;&gt;&lt;a%20href=&#39;/controlpanel/blogs/posteditor.aspx/&amp;lt;a%20href=&amp;quot;https:/www.microsoft.com/en-us/Search/result.aspx?q=Azure%20StorSimple%20Cmdlets&amp;amp;amp;form=MSHOME&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;span%20style=&amp;quot;color:%20#0563c1;&amp;quot;&amp;gt;here&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;&amp;lt;span&amp;gt;.&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&#39;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span&gt;&lt;a%20href=&#39;/controlpanel/blogs/posteditor.aspx/&amp;lt;a%20href=&amp;quot;https:/www.microsoft.com/en-us/Search/result.aspx?q=Azure%20StorSimple%20Cmdlets&amp;amp;amp;form=MSHOME&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;span%20style=&amp;quot;color:%20#0563c1;&amp;quot;&amp;gt;here&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;&amp;lt;span&amp;gt;.&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&#39;&gt;.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;">here</a></span><span><a href="/controlpanel/blogs/posteditor.aspx/&lt;span%20style=&#39;color:%20#0563c1;&#39;&gt;&lt;a%20href=&#39;/controlpanel/blogs/posteditor.aspx/&amp;lt;a%20href=&amp;quot;https:/www.microsoft.com/en-us/Search/result.aspx?q=Azure%20StorSimple%20Cmdlets&amp;amp;amp;form=MSHOME&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;span%20style=&amp;quot;color:%20#0563c1;&amp;quot;&amp;gt;here&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;&amp;lt;span&amp;gt;.&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&#39;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span&gt;&lt;a%20href=&#39;/controlpanel/blogs/posteditor.aspx/&amp;lt;a%20href=&amp;quot;https:/www.microsoft.com/en-us/Search/result.aspx?q=Azure%20StorSimple%20Cmdlets&amp;amp;amp;form=MSHOME&amp;quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;span%20style=&amp;quot;color:%20#0563c1;&amp;quot;&amp;gt;here&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;&amp;lt;span&amp;gt;.&amp;lt;/span&amp;gt;&#39;&gt;.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;">.</a>&nbsp; </span></span><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:small;">Additionally, StorSimple will now also include support for the Azure Zone Redundant Storage (ZRS). This redundancy option helps keep data durable by storing an equivalent of three copies of data across multiple facilities.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:small;">Since the release of the StorSimple 8000 series, customers such as BDO, a financial services firm in Australia and Textron, an aerospace and defense manufacturer in the United States, have consistently noted positive business impact.&nbsp; Russ Phillips, Chief Technology Officer at BDO, recently stated, &ldquo;Along with our VMware cost avoidance, we&rsquo;re saving $500,000 [Australian dollars] in storage costs over three years, which is a large slice of our IT budget. That doesn&rsquo;t include buying backup tapes and the $130,000 per year it costs just to keep tapes on a shelf, not knowing whether they&rsquo;ve been corrupted. We&rsquo;ve delivered three times as many projects in the last six months as we did in the two years before we adopted StorSimple hybrid cloud storage.&rdquo; BDO has been a StorSimple customer for some time now and they continue to embrace our technology with deployment of StorSimple 8000 series solutions.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:small;">At Textron, with StorSimple, they have been able to significantly reduce storage costs and also move aging data to a more cost effective storage platform. &ldquo;We&rsquo;ve reduced storage costs by 80 percent, or $2.5 million, by moving into Microsoft Azure using StorSimple, which helped us meet our targeted IT budget reductions. We had data that was past its useful life taking up space on all our core storage platforms, and we wanted to move this older data to a cheaper storage solution. We&rsquo;re happy to let Microsoft innovate and bring new datacenter service offerings to the table so that we can focus on running our business,&rdquo; said Les Rowland, Chief Architect of Architecture at Textron. Further, Les is planning to test and use the StorSimple Virtual Appliance (SVA), which resides fully within Azure, for specific business use cases at Textron.&nbsp; We are happy to see customers like Textron embrace our innovations like Cloud Snapshots, Tiered Storage, and SVA and put them to use in ways that greatly help their businesses. </span></p>
<p><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:small;">At Microsoft we continue to deliver innovative and important hybrid cloud storage solutions globally &ndash; and I am excited to see our customers embracing our new innovations.&nbsp; With StorSimple Update 1 we can now deliver even more cloud connectivity, automation, redundancy and data migration capabilities to our customers. </span></p>
<p><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:small;"><span>For a comprehensive set of our StorSimple case studies, across multiple industries, as well as white papers and other resources please visit </span><a href="http://www.microsoft.com/storsimple"><span style="color:#0563c1;">www.microsoft.com/storsimple</span></a><span> </span></span></p>
<p><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:small;">Guru Pangal</span></p></p>
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<title>From the Customer&#8217;s Perspective &#8211; Handling Explosive Data Growth</title>
<link>https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/cis/2015/01/09/from-the-customers-perspective-handling-explosive-data-growth/</link>
<comments>https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/cis/2015/01/09/from-the-customers-perspective-handling-explosive-data-growth/#comments</comments>
<pubDate>Fri, 09 Jan 2015 15:37:25 +0000</pubDate>
<dc:creator><![CDATA[Hal Nunn]]></dc:creator>
<category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category>
<guid isPermaLink="false">https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/cis/2015/01/09/from-the-customers-perspective-handling-explosive-data-growth/</guid>
<description><![CDATA[According to the Gartner Group, enterprise IT &#8216;s biggest challenge today is double-digit data growth.&#160; In fact, data is growing in enterprise storage banks at the alarming average of 40% per year, as estimated by IDC.&#160; Other industry experts place the number even higher. &#8220;Data is growing in enterprise IT departments at &#160;50% per year,&#8221;...]]></description>
<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><span style="font-size:medium;">According to the Gartner Group, enterprise IT &lsquo;s biggest challenge today is double-digit data growth.&nbsp; In fact, data is growing in enterprise storage banks at the alarming average of 40% per year, as estimated by IDC.&nbsp; Other industry experts place the number even higher. &ldquo;Data is growing in enterprise IT departments at &nbsp;50% per year,&rdquo; says Tam Dell&#39;Oro, founder and president of Dell&#39;Oro Group, a research and consulting firm.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size:medium;">While this is going on, the storage hardware industry giants continue to claim that the best way to deal with this issue is to keep purchasing more and more expensive Storage Area Network (SAN) arrays. This is like a car dealer telling a customer that if they can&rsquo;t fit enough stuff in their recently purchased car, to just &nbsp;buy another of the exact same car to help carry all the stuff around.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size:medium;">&nbsp;</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size:medium;">In addition, this solution no longer resonates with IT departments because:</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size:medium;">&nbsp;</span></p>
<ul>
<li>
<p>They are already spending a very high percentage of their total IT budget on SAN storage</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Too many of them have contracted a severe case of &ldquo;Storage Paranoia&rdquo;, i.e. they know they will run out of storage at some point, but don&rsquo;t know exactly when</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>They are also experiencing &ldquo;Storage Catch 22&rdquo; &#8211; How do you know exactly how much new SAN capacity to buy ? If you buy too little, you run out and have a storage crisis on your hands. If you buy too much, you are accused of wasting resources and budget dollars. Either way, it&rsquo;s a losing proposition for the IT person in charge</p>
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</ul>
<p><span style="font-size:medium;">&nbsp;</span></p>
<p><a href="http://infi.com/"><span style="color:#0000ff;font-size:medium;">Infinity Pharmaceuticals</span></a><span style="font-size:medium;">, a rapidly growing drug development company, found themselves in this exact situation. &ldquo;Our amount of data is growing at a remarkably rapid pace,&rdquo; says Zac Saunderson, Network Engineer at Infinity Pharmaceuticals. &ldquo;In our industry, we produce data at an even greater rate as we get closer to releasing product lines.&rdquo; In the past, Infinity primarily stored its data on a SAN in its datacenter and it also stored some data locally on file servers. Keeping up with the demands of high data growth was sapping the time and resources of their entire IT staff. As a result, they decided to take a fresh look at their IT infrastructure to discover if there were new technologies available which could help them operate more efficiently.&nbsp; What they found was hybrid cloud storage from StorSimple. </span></p>
<p><span style="font-size:medium;">&nbsp;</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size:medium;">In 2011, Infinity decided to start using cloud technologies&mdash;specifically Microsoft Azure&mdash;for several business functions. As part of the move to the cloud, the company adopted StorSimple hybrid cloud storage. By storing infrequently accessed data in the cloud, Infinity was able to greatly reduce the amount of data that needed to be stored on their SANs, freeing up SAN space for other important IT projects. &nbsp;Also, StorSimple combines local enterprise storage with Azure for cloud economies and DR to reduce overall cost and complexity of traditional storage and data protection. In 2014, Infinity took part in an early adopter program for the latest generation of the solution, the StorSimple 8000 series hybrid cloud storage arrays. &ldquo;We believe that there&rsquo;s nothing else in the market that&rsquo;s as easy to use with as much control as StorSimple,&rdquo; says Saunderson. &ldquo;We&rsquo;re continually finding new ways to use our StorSimple devices.&rdquo; One key result of the test Saunderson said was, &ldquo;We don&rsquo;t have to deal with tapes, augment our SAN, or seek outside help with storage management, so we estimate we will save about $65,000 in just the first year of using StorSimple. It&rsquo;s heartening to have such a reliable, complementary way to control data growth and keep storage costs from skyrocketing.&rdquo;</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size:medium;">&nbsp;</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size:medium;">Other StorSimple customers have experienced similar results in the battle against runaway data growth. </span><a href="http://medplastgroup.com/"><span style="color:#0000ff;font-size:medium;">MedPlast</span></a><span style="font-size:medium;">, a rapidly growing medical device manufacturer, was suffering from acute data growth symptoms. In June 2011, MedPlast switched its data-storage environment to StorSimple hybrid cloud storage. &ldquo;The concept of essentially bottomless data storage was very appealing to us,&rdquo; says MedPlast IT Director, Dan Streufert. With StorSimple, MedPlast can use three tiers of storage for different classes of data: solid state disks for the most frequently accessed data; hard disk drives for less frequently accessed data; and cloud storage for inactive data and off-site data protection. After a few settings are chosen by MedPlast , StorSimple automatically tiers data to the selected locations without their IT staff having to worry about it.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size:medium;">&nbsp;</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size:medium;">The company began an upgrade of its data-storage environment in August 2013 by participating in a technology adoption program for the new Microsoft Azure StorSimple 8000 Series hybrid storage arrays.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size:medium;">&ldquo;We were very interested in this new version of StorSimple because of its tight integration with Microsoft Azure,&rdquo; says Streufert. &ldquo;We found the combination of a new centralized management portal, enhanced alerting features, automated archiving, and new virtual appliances very compelling.&rdquo;</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size:medium;">&nbsp;</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size:medium;">MedPlast uses StorSimple to store almost 95 percent of its data, including all of its departmental databases. The company uses deduplication and compression features in StorSimple to help minimize storage consumption. And by using the cloud snapshot feature to automate off-site data protection, Streufert&rsquo;s IT team eliminated the need to manage tape backups and streamlined their disaster recovery program. &ldquo;When we store databases on a StorSimple array, we can snapshot it to the Microsoft Azure cloud and simplify the backup and recovery procedures for those databases,&rdquo; says Streufert.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size:medium;">&nbsp;</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size:medium;">&nbsp;</span></p>
<p><a href="http://www.walbridge.com/"><span style="color:#0000ff;font-size:medium;">Walbridge</span></a><span style="font-size:medium;">, a large global construction company, first heard about StorSimple hybrid cloud storage while attending a Microsoft regional seminar on new cloud technologies and unique solutions for enterprise storage. Microsoft recommended the StorSimple hybrid cloud storage solution to solve the company&rsquo;s storage problems. After comparing this advanced solution to more conventional storage arrays, the company was convinced that StorSimple was the way to go.&nbsp; </span></p>
<p><span style="font-size:medium;">&nbsp;</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size:medium;">As AVP of Information Technology,&nbsp; Cynthia Weaver, puts it, &ldquo;We needed to find a cost-effective new technology that could help us cope with the explosive data growth that we are experiencing. Storage space that used to last us 5 years now only lasts for 3 years. With StorSimple and Windows Azure hybrid cloud storage, we found exactly what we were looking for.&rdquo;&nbsp; The Windows Azure/StorSimple solution has saved Walbridge 65% in overall storage costs over the SAN alternative and has turned out to be a much more efficient and cost effective way to handle the company&rsquo;s massive data growth.&nbsp; </span></p>
<p><span style="font-size:medium;">&nbsp;</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size:medium;">After deploying the StorSimple solution, Walbridge&rsquo;s backup and restore functions are 50% faster than before and the administrative overhead of data protection has been cut in half.&nbsp; It also provides a much faster way to recover deleted files. For example, to recover a lost file, all that is needed is the date and time the file was deleted and the file is restored in under 2 minutes, compared to 3 days using the old tape system.&nbsp; In addition, individual database restore times have dropped by 80%.&nbsp; </span></p>
<p><span style="font-size:medium;">&nbsp;</span></p>
<p><span style="font-family:Calibri;font-size:medium;">Clearly, there now does exist a much more efficient and cost effective way to handle run away data growth in the enterprise.</span></p></p>
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<title>StorSimple Adapter for SharePoint is now generally available</title>
<link>https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/cis/2014/08/25/storsimple-adapter-for-sharepoint-is-now-generally-available/</link>
<comments>https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/cis/2014/08/25/storsimple-adapter-for-sharepoint-is-now-generally-available/#comments</comments>
<pubDate>Mon, 25 Aug 2014 22:44:00 +0000</pubDate>
<dc:creator><![CDATA[Burzin_Patel]]></dc:creator>
<category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category>
<guid isPermaLink="false">https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/cis/2014/08/25/storsimple-adapter-for-sharepoint-is-now-generally-available/</guid>
<description><![CDATA[Today we are excited to announce availability of the StorSimple Adapter for SharePoint (SASP) for&#160;the StorSimple solution. The StorSimple Adapter for SharePoint brings the hybrid cloud storage capabilities of Microsoft Azure StorSimple to on premise SharePoint farm deployments. StorSimple&#39;s distinctive hybrid storage features such as dynamic capacity expansion to Azure storage, automated off-site data protection...]]></description>
<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><i>Today we are excited to announce availability of the StorSimple Adapter for SharePoint (SASP) for&nbsp;the </i><i>StorSimple solution. The StorSimple Adapter for SharePoint brings the hybrid cloud storage capabilities of Microsoft Azure StorSimple to on premise SharePoint farm deployments. StorSimple&#39;s distinctive hybrid storage features such as dynamic capacity expansion to Azure storage, automated off-site data protection with cloud snapshots, and inline deduplication and compression combine together with SharePoint&#39;s rich collaboration and management offerings. The result is a compelling synergistic solution from Microsoft, that is fully supported and is ready to deploy into datacenters today. </i></p>
<p><i>&nbsp;</i></p>
<p><i>The solution uses SharePoint </i><a href="http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee748638(v=office.15).aspx"><i><span style="color:#0563c1;">Remote BLOB Storage</span></i></a><i> to seamlessly offload BLOB content stored in SharePoint&#39;s SQL Server based content databases onto iSCSI volumes stored and managed by the StorSimple appliance. This solution relieves IO load on the SQL Server to improve end user responsiveness and enables the user data to get the benefit of data protection and disaster recovery features that are the hallmark of StorSimple</i><i>. The collaborative, content-driven nature of SharePoint benefits from this solution. In partnership with Kroll Ontrack, IT administrators can search and restore individual SharePoint items without conducting a full database restore by using </i><a href="http://www.krollontrack.com/software/powercontrols/"><i><span style="color:#0563c1;">Ontrack PowerControls (version 7.2)</span></i></a><i>. All these capabilities are available and supported on SharePoint 2010 and SharePoint 2013. </i></p>
<p><i>&nbsp;</i></p>
<p><i>For more information about the StorSimple Adapter for SharePoint please&nbsp;visit the <a href="http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dn757737.aspx"><span style="color:#0563c1;">documentation</span></a> page.</i></p>
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<title>Shifting up from infrastructure management to data-driven innovation</title>
<link>https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/cis/2014/07/09/shifting-up-from-infrastructure-management-to-data-driven-innovation/</link>
<comments>https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/cis/2014/07/09/shifting-up-from-infrastructure-management-to-data-driven-innovation/#comments</comments>
<pubDate>Wed, 09 Jul 2014 06:58:00 +0000</pubDate>
<dc:creator><![CDATA[MA Farley]]></dc:creator>
<category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[8000 series]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Azure]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[clone]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[cloud storage]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Data Mobility]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Failover]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Hybrid]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Microsoft]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[StorSimple]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[virtual appliance]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[virtual volumes]]></category>
<guid isPermaLink="false">https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/cis/2014/07/09/shifting-up-from-infrastructure-management-to-data-driven-innovation/</guid>
<description><![CDATA[Woot!&#160; It&#39;s a huge day for us at StorSimple/Microsoft!&#160; We are announcing our new Microsoft Azure StorSimple 8000 series arrays, the StorSimple 8100 &#38; 8600,&#160;that integrate with two new Azure services,&#160;the Microsoft Azure StorSimple Manager and the Microsoft Azure StorSimple Virtual Appliance.&#160; The 8100 and 8600 are hybrid storage arrays in every sense of the...]]></description>
<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p style="margin:0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-family:Calibri Light;font-size:300%;"><a href="https://msdnshared.blob.core.windows.net/media/TNBlogsFS/prod.evol.blogs.technet.com/CommunityServer.Blogs.Components.WeblogFiles/00/00/00/97/25/control%20plane%20illustration%20w%20mgr%20screen%208100%20photo%20and%20sva.png" original-url="http://blogs.technet.com/cfs-file.ashx/__key/communityserver-blogs-components-weblogfiles/00-00-00-97-25/control-plane-illustration-w-mgr-screen-8100-photo-and-sva.png"><img alt=" " src="https://msdnshared.blob.core.windows.net/media/TNBlogsFS/prod.evol.blogs.technet.com/CommunityServer.Blogs.Components.WeblogFiles/00/00/00/97/25/control%20plane%20illustration%20w%20mgr%20screen%208100%20photo%20and%20sva.png" original-url="http://blogs.technet.com/resized-image.ashx/__size/550x0/__key/communityserver-blogs-components-weblogfiles/00-00-00-97-25/control-plane-illustration-w-mgr-screen-8100-photo-and-sva.png" border="0" /></a></span></p>
<p><span style="font-family:Calibri;"><span style="font-size:medium;">Woot!&nbsp; It&#39;s a huge day for us at StorSimple/Microsoft!&nbsp; We are announcing our new Microsoft Azure StorSimple 8000 series arrays, the StorSimple 8100 &amp; 8600,&nbsp;that integrate with two new Azure services,&nbsp;the Microsoft Azure StorSimple Manager and the Microsoft Azure StorSimple Virtual Appliance.&nbsp; The 8100 and 8600 are hybrid storage arrays in every sense of the word with automated data tiering&nbsp;between SSDs and HDDs &#8211; but with an additional&nbsp;cloud storage tier with the lowest online storage cost and cloud-scaling capacity.&nbsp; If you&nbsp;are tired of buying and installing storage and rebalancing workloads all the time, you&nbsp;really need to check out StorSimple. The same is true for managing data protection, because off-site data protection is completely automated&nbsp;with StorSimple. And if you can&#39;t test DR because it&#39;s too disruptive and takes too long, you need to look into non-disruptive, thin recovery with StorSimple. Then there is managing double digit data growth &#8211;&nbsp;that too is something StorSimple solutions excel at.&nbsp; Check out what our customers have to say about this revolutionary storage technology by looking at&nbsp;our</span></span><span style="font-family:Calibri;"><span style="font-size:medium;"><a href="http://www.microsoft.com/casestudies/Case_Study_Search_Results.aspx?Type=1&amp;Keywords=storsimple"> customer case studies</a>. </span></span><span style="font-family:Calibri;"><span style="font-size:medium;"><br /></span></span></p>
<p><span style="font-family:Calibri;"><span style="font-size:medium;">If hybrid cloud storage had existed years ago, we wouldn&#39;t have needed the complex storage and data management technologies and processes that we have today.&nbsp; When you integrate off-site cloud storage with local enterprise storage many of the difficult storage management problems disappear. </span></span><span style="font-family:Calibri;"><span style="font-size:medium;">A comparison of non-cloud hybrid storage and StorSimple hybrid storage is summarized in the graphic below. The addition of an integrated cloud tier off-site gives the StorSimple the advantages of automated data protection, archiving and online capacity for dormant, inactive&nbsp;files.<br /></span></span></p>
<p><strong><span style="font-family:Calibri;"><span style="font-size:medium;"><a href="https://msdnshared.blob.core.windows.net/media/TNBlogsFS/prod.evol.blogs.technet.com/CommunityServer.Blogs.Components.WeblogFiles/00/00/00/97/25/hybrid%20storage%20comparison%20with%20hcs.png" original-url="http://blogs.technet.com/cfs-file.ashx/__key/communityserver-blogs-components-weblogfiles/00-00-00-97-25/hybrid-storage-comparison-with-hcs.png"><img alt=" " src="https://msdnshared.blob.core.windows.net/media/TNBlogsFS/prod.evol.blogs.technet.com/CommunityServer.Blogs.Components.WeblogFiles/00/00/00/97/25/hybrid%20storage%20comparison%20with%20hcs.png" original-url="http://blogs.technet.com/resized-image.ashx/__size/550x0/__key/communityserver-blogs-components-weblogfiles/00-00-00-97-25/hybrid-storage-comparison-with-hcs.png" border="0" /></a><br /></span></span></strong></p>
<p><strong><span style="font-family:Calibri;font-size:x-large;">The big shift to&nbsp;a data-centric ROI</span></strong></p>
<p><span style="font-family:Calibri;"><span style="font-size:medium;">StorSimple has been reducing the cost of storage for customers for several years. With the introduction today of Microsoft Azure StorSimple solutions, a new vision of hybrid cloud storage is taking shape &#8211; one where cloud services and data mobility is front and center.&nbsp;The new economic equation of Microsoft Azure StorSimple features expanded access to enterprise data by cloud-resident applications as well as the greater management efficiencies customers appreciate.&nbsp;</span></span></p>
<p><span style="font-family:Calibri;"><span style="font-size:medium;"><a href="https://msdnshared.blob.core.windows.net/media/TNBlogsFS/prod.evol.blogs.technet.com/CommunityServer.Blogs.Components.WeblogFiles/00/00/00/97/25/HCS_ServiceDashboard.png" original-url="http://blogs.technet.com/cfs-file.ashx/__key/communityserver-blogs-components-weblogfiles/00-00-00-97-25/HCS_5F00_ServiceDashboard.png"><img alt=" " src="https://msdnshared.blob.core.windows.net/media/TNBlogsFS/prod.evol.blogs.technet.com/CommunityServer.Blogs.Components.WeblogFiles/00/00/00/97/25/HCS_ServiceDashboard.png" original-url="http://blogs.technet.com/resized-image.ashx/__size/550x0/__key/communityserver-blogs-components-weblogfiles/00-00-00-97-25/HCS_5F00_ServiceDashboard.png" border="0" /></a><br /></span></span></p>
<p><span style="font-family:Calibri;"><span style="font-size:medium;">The new StorSimple Manager is an Azure&nbsp;management portal that controls all functions of all StorSimple 8000 series arrays across the enterprise.&nbsp;It provides a single, consolidated management point that uses the Internet as a control plane to configure all parameters of StorSimple 8000 series arrays and for displaying up-to-the-minute status information in a comprehensive dashboard. There is never a need to visit a remote site to manage removable data protection media or upgrade storage capacity because data protection and capacity expansion are done automatically by the array using cloud storage.&nbsp;Data management tasks, such as configuring data retention polices is accomplished from the StorSimple Manager for all sites, enabling centralized compliance with corporate standards. The StorSimple Manager&#39;s reach is powerful and a great example of how hybrid management concepts bring not only real cost savings, but more accurate control of infrastructure equipment and processes.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; <br /></span></span></p>
<p><span style="font-family:Calibri;"><span style="font-size:medium;"><strong><span style="font-size:large;">Overcoming location&nbsp;limitations to leverage data </span></strong></span></span></p>
<p><span style="font-family:Calibri;"><span style="font-size:medium;">The location where data is stored is typically determined by the performance requirements of the most latency-sensitive applications. This is certainly understandable, but it also restricts data from being effectively leveraged by systems and applications in other locations such as cloud datacenters. Discussions of using enterprise data in the cloud have often been in the context of <a href="/b/in_the_cloud/archive/2014/02/28/success-with-hybrid-cloud-by-scenario-cloud-bursting.aspx">cloud bursting</a>, but there are many other scenarios where the StorSimple Virtual Appliance will provide access to enterprise data in Azure. </span></span></p>
<p><span style="font-family:Calibri;"><span style="font-size:medium;">&nbsp;<a href="https://msdnshared.blob.core.windows.net/media/TNBlogsFS/prod.evol.blogs.technet.com/CommunityServer.Blogs.Components.WeblogFiles/00/00/00/97/25/8000%20series%20big%20picture%20view%20including%20VSA.png" original-url="http://blogs.technet.com/cfs-file.ashx/__key/communityserver-blogs-components-weblogfiles/00-00-00-97-25/8000-series-big-picture-view-including-VSA.png"><img alt=" " src="https://msdnshared.blob.core.windows.net/media/TNBlogsFS/prod.evol.blogs.technet.com/CommunityServer.Blogs.Components.WeblogFiles/00/00/00/97/25/8000%20series%20big%20picture%20view%20including%20VSA.png" original-url="http://blogs.technet.com/resized-image.ashx/__size/550x0/__key/communityserver-blogs-components-weblogfiles/00-00-00-97-25/8000-series-big-picture-view-including-VSA.png" border="0" /></a></span></span></p>
<p><span style="font-family:Calibri;"><span style="font-size:medium;">Data mobility with the 8000 series arrays and the Virtual Appliance starts with the data that has been uploaded to Azure by StorSimple&nbsp;<em>cloud snapshots</em>. &nbsp;Cloud snapshots&nbsp;are like snapshots in other storage products, except they are stored off-site in the cloud without the capacity limitations that can compromise data retention with on-premises disk-based backup systems.&nbsp;Cloud snapshot jobs not only effectively backup data on the StorSimple array, they also synchronize the volume on-premises with the virtual volume in Azure.&nbsp;Cloud snapshots contain deduped data that requires less storage capacity in the cloud, but needs to be rehydrated to be used again. The StorSimple Virtual Appliance rehydrates virtual volumes in Azure, making them&nbsp;available to VMs and applications there.&nbsp;This allows customers to use the data they have in Azure for the following scenarios:</span></span></p>
<ul>
<li><span style="font-family:Calibri;"><span style="font-size:medium;">Disaster recovery</span></span></li>
<li><span style="font-family:Calibri;"><span style="font-size:medium;">Dev/test</span></span></li>
<li><span style="font-family:Calibri;"><span style="font-size:medium;">Discovery/search</span></span></li>
<li><span style="font-family:Calibri;"><span style="font-size:medium;">Application migration</span></span></li>
</ul>
<p><span style="font-family:Calibri;"><span style="font-size:medium;">There are two ways to transition virtual volumes in Azure for use by VMs there: <em>failover</em> and <em>cloning</em>.&nbsp; Both processes are managed quickly and easily from within the StorSimple Manager, which identifies the volume that will be transitioned and the host (or VM) that will then be granted access to it. Failover takes a virtual volume in the cloud and directly assigns it for use by a VM in order to continue processing the same application that had been using it previously. For instance, a disaster that halts operations on-premises could be recovered from by failing over effected volumes to VMs in the cloud. If, or when, it is desired to move the volume back on-premises at a later time, another &quot;inverse&quot; failover operation can be performed to re-assign the virtual volume to a host (which can be a guest VM) on-premises. <br /></span></span></p>
<p><span style="font-family:Calibri;"><span style="font-size:medium;">Cloning is similar to failover, except that a second, identical virtual volume is created that is assigned to a VM in Azure or a host/guest VM on-premises. The creation of clone volumes from source virtual volumes allows IT teams to setup temporary VMs and applications&nbsp;in&nbsp;an IaaS &quot;sandbox&quot; for specific objectives such as searching historical data or for application experiments using real, enterprise data. Cloned volumes are not kept in sync with source volumes, but there are many applications that don&#39;t need real-time data as much as they&nbsp;need&nbsp;<em>real</em> data.&nbsp;For instance, data analytics and discovery applications can be run against day-old data and identify the exact same trends or find the exact same&nbsp;content as it would if running against live data.&nbsp;Using cloned volumes in the cloud with temporary&nbsp;systems and networks is much cheaper and less disruptive than trying to do the same thing on-premises.&nbsp; </span></span></p>
<p><span style="font-family:Calibri;"><span style="font-size:medium;">IT teams will be happy to know that the environment for accessing data in Azure using the Virtual Appliance models on-premises SAN connections. The Virtual Appliance&nbsp;connects to Azure VMs using a virtual iSCSI Ethernet network and the same platform volume and storage management tools (such as Windows Disk Management) and iSCSI initiators that are used on-premises. That means many of the same system management skills used on-premises are used in Azure to do the same things there. <br /></span></span></p>
<p><span style="font-family:Calibri;"><span style="font-size:medium;">We are looking forward to seeing how our customers use the Virtual Appliance in the months and years to come. There is a lot of potential to do great things together to build storage that is not only cheaper to own and operate, but also unlocks more of the value inherent in corporate data.<br /></span></span></p>
<p><span style="font-family:Calibri;"><span style="font-size:medium;">Check out our new 8000 series solutions at <a href="http://www.microsoft.com/storsimple">http://www.microsoft.com/storsimple</a><br /></span></span></p>
<p><span style="font-family:Calibri;"><span style="font-size:medium;">&nbsp;</span></span></p>
<p><span style="font-family:Calibri;"><span style="font-size:medium;">&nbsp;</span></span></p>
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<title>Devices and services enterprise architectures are happening</title>
<link>https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/cis/2013/08/20/devices-and-services-enterprise-architectures-are-happening/</link>
<comments>https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/cis/2013/08/20/devices-and-services-enterprise-architectures-are-happening/#comments</comments>
<pubDate>Tue, 20 Aug 2013 06:30:00 +0000</pubDate>
<dc:creator><![CDATA[MA Farley]]></dc:creator>
<category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[devices and services]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[hybrid cloud]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[SDN]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[StorSimple]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[VMworld]]></category>
<guid isPermaLink="false">https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/cis/2013/08/20/devices-and-services-enterprise-architectures-are-happening/</guid>
<description><![CDATA[As you are probably aware, Microsoft is becoming&#160;a &#8220;devices &#38; services&#8221; company. Don&#8217;t assume that devices refer just to phones,&#160;tablets and consumer services, because they can also be data center infrastructure products.&#160;The same way that client/server architectures reshaped enterprise computing in the 90s, device and service designs will change the future of enterprise IT.&#160;The broad...]]></description>
<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="https://msdnshared.blob.core.windows.net/media/TNBlogsFS/prod.evol.blogs.technet.com/CommunityServer.Blogs.Components.WeblogFiles/00/00/00/97/25/6378.enterprise%20device%20with%20switch%20icon-2%20.jpg" original-url="http://blogs.technet.com/cfs-file.ashx/__key/communityserver-blogs-components-weblogfiles/00-00-00-97-25/6378.enterprise-device-with-switch-icon_2D00_2-.jpg"><img src="https://msdnshared.blob.core.windows.net/media/TNBlogsFS/prod.evol.blogs.technet.com/CommunityServer.Blogs.Components.WeblogFiles/00/00/00/97/25/6378.enterprise%20device%20with%20switch%20icon-2%20.jpg" original-url="http://blogs.technet.com/resized-image.ashx/__size/550x0/__key/communityserver-blogs-components-weblogfiles/00-00-00-97-25/6378.enterprise-device-with-switch-icon_2D00_2-.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a></p>
<p>As you are probably aware, Microsoft is becoming&nbsp;<a href="http://www.synergymx.com/post/2013/08/08/microsoft-is-pushing-to-move-its-internal-software-development-to-the/">a &#8220;devices &amp; services&#8221; company</a>. Don&#8217;t assume that devices refer just to phones,&nbsp;tablets and consumer services, because they can also be data center infrastructure products.&nbsp;The same way that client/server architectures reshaped enterprise computing in the 90s, device and service designs will change the future of enterprise IT.&nbsp;The broad interest in <a href="http://www.zdnet.com/au/case-study-ballarat-grammar-uses-sdn-to-fight-malware-7000015942/">Software Defined Networking (SDN)</a>&nbsp;shows how eager customers and vendors are to integrate on-premise devices (both real and virtual) with centralized management services. Why? To respond faster to changes and to increase the utilization of the physical infrastructure.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;</p>
<p>The <a href="http://www.microsoft.com/storsimple">hybrid cloud storage solution from Microsoft</a> is&nbsp;an excellent example of how on-premises devices and cloud storage services can be integrated to achieve a more flexible IT infrastructure.&nbsp;Last year Microsoft acquired StorSimple and with it, enterprise storage devices that help customers manage unstructured data growth &#8211;&nbsp;something that is an unsolved&nbsp;problem for most IT organizations.&nbsp;The StorSimple device automates time consuming storage processes and transparently uploads data to Windows Azure Storage services, allowing the IT team to focus on other problems.</p>
<p>The device part of this solution is an on-premises&nbsp;iSCSI storage array with a&nbsp;cloud-connected back end that accesses objects in&nbsp;Windows Azure Storage services.&nbsp;Changed data is encrypted and backed up automatically to an off-site Windows Azure data center,&nbsp;where&nbsp;3 copies are made for redundant protection.&nbsp;If a disaster strikes the customer&#8217;s data center,&nbsp;StorSimple devices have the intelligence to perform deterministic recoveries that eliminate unnecessary data downloads that waste time.&nbsp;Unlike dedupe appliances that have data retention limitations based on their internal capacity, the storage services of Windows Azure can be used to retain as much backup data as desired. The StorSimple device manages storage capacity by relocating stale data to Windows Azure Storage. In most cases,&nbsp;the data selected for relocation is already in the cloud because it had been previously backed up there, which means capacity relief is a matter of redirecting data pointers in the StorSimple device.&nbsp;Compared to&nbsp;adding storage capacity to traditional enterprise storage arrays, the device and service architecture is a significant improvement.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;</p>
<p>There will undoubtedly be other hybrid management architectures that integrate enterprise-class devices with cloud-based services. For example, the <a href="http://robertsmit.wordpress.com/2013/06/12/windowsazure-hyper-v-recovery-manager-azure-hyperv-recovery-msteched-tee13-draas/">Windows Azure Hyper-V Recovery Manager</a> is an example of how Microsoft is integrating (virtual) devices with Azure services to create a DR solution for Windows Server 2012 customers.&nbsp;</p>
<p>Next week&#8217;s VMworld conference in San Francisco will be full of new announcements of their <a href="http://blogs.gartner.com/chris-wolf/2013/08/19/vmworld-2013-will-vmware-regain-its-voice/">software defined data center (SDDC)</a> initiative.&nbsp;If you find yourself wondering what the all this talk is about &#8220;data planes&#8221; and &#8220;control planes&#8221; you might try translating that inflated jargon into something a little more concrete &#8211; such as devices and services.&nbsp;</p>
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<title>Whiteboard video overview of the Microsoft hybrid cloud storage solution</title>
<link>https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/cis/2013/07/18/whiteboard-video-overview-of-the-microsoft-hybrid-cloud-storage-solution/</link>
<comments>https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/cis/2013/07/18/whiteboard-video-overview-of-the-microsoft-hybrid-cloud-storage-solution/#comments</comments>
<pubDate>Thu, 18 Jul 2013 12:57:00 +0000</pubDate>
<dc:creator><![CDATA[MA Farley]]></dc:creator>
<category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[archiving]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Azure Storage]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[backup]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[cloud tier]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[DR]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[hybrid cloud storage]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[iSCSI]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[SAN]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[StorSimple]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[tiering]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[whiteboard]]></category>
<guid isPermaLink="false">https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/cis/2013/07/18/whiteboard-video-overview-of-the-microsoft-hybrid-cloud-storage-solution/</guid>
<description><![CDATA[Here&#8217;s a whiteboard video I made introducing&#160;the Microsoft hybrid cloud storage solution.&#160;It&#8217;s based on the technologies Microsoft acquired with StorSimple and their integration with Windows Azure Storage. Here&#8217;s a link to our web page at Microsoft if you want to find out more. [View:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xxi6FBJQA_M]]]></description>
<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Here&#8217;s a whiteboard video I made introducing&nbsp;the Microsoft hybrid cloud storage solution.&nbsp;It&#8217;s based on the technologies Microsoft acquired with StorSimple and their integration with Windows Azure Storage. Here&#8217;s a<a href="http://www.microsoft.com/storsimple" target="_blank"> link to our web page at Microsoft</a> if you want to find out more.</p>
<p>[View:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xxi6FBJQA_M]</p>
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<title>Hybrid cloud storage with an object storage back end</title>
<link>https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/cis/2013/06/25/hybrid-cloud-storage-with-an-object-storage-back-end/</link>
<comments>https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/cis/2013/06/25/hybrid-cloud-storage-with-an-object-storage-back-end/#comments</comments>
<pubDate>Tue, 25 Jun 2013 13:00:00 +0000</pubDate>
<dc:creator><![CDATA[MA Farley]]></dc:creator>
<category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Azure Storage]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[backup]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[CiS]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[cloud]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[cloud online storage]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[cloud-integrated storage]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[data portability]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[DR]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[hybrid cloud]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[infrastructure]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[object storage]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[storage capacity]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[StorSimple]]></category>
<guid isPermaLink="false">https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/cis/2013/06/25/hybrid-cloud-storage-with-an-object-storage-back-end/</guid>
<description><![CDATA[I attended the Object Storage Summit last week in San Francisco. It was an excellent event with lots of good discussions about object storage &#8211; what it is, how people are using it, how is it being sold, is it&#160;a feature or a market?&#160;In short all the necessary navel-gazing that goes on when a technology...]]></description>
<content:encoded><![CDATA[<div class="O0"><a href="https://msdnshared.blob.core.windows.net/media/TNBlogsFS/prod.evol.blogs.technet.com/CommunityServer.Blogs.Components.WeblogFiles/00/00/00/97/25/4188.object%20local%20cloud%20online%20historical.PNG" original-url="http://blogs.technet.com/cfs-file.ashx/__key/communityserver-blogs-components-weblogfiles/00-00-00-97-25/4188.object-local-cloud-online-historical.PNG"><img style="float: left;" src="https://msdnshared.blob.core.windows.net/media/TNBlogsFS/prod.evol.blogs.technet.com/CommunityServer.Blogs.Components.WeblogFiles/00/00/00/97/25/4188.object%20local%20cloud%20online%20historical.PNG" original-url="http://blogs.technet.com/resized-image.ashx/__size/550x0/__key/communityserver-blogs-components-weblogfiles/00-00-00-97-25/4188.object-local-cloud-online-historical.PNG" alt="" width="300" height="156" border="0" /></a>I attended the Object Storage Summit last week in San Francisco. It was an excellent event with lots of good discussions about object storage &#8211; what it is, how people are using it, how is it being sold, is it&nbsp;a feature or a market?&nbsp;In short all the necessary navel-gazing that goes on when a technology is trying to break through to a mass market. One of the things that became clear to me was the importance of articulating how object storage is being used and why it is effective. Hence, this post.</div>
<p>Hybrid cloud storage uses object storage in the&nbsp;cloud. Data on-premises is uploaded to cloud object storage until it is accessed again. Many people have first hand experience using cloud object storage with file sharing apps/sites like Dropbox,&nbsp;SkyDrive, YouSendIt, etc, but cloud object storage it also done very effectively with enterprise-level hybrid cloud storage (HCS)&nbsp;like the Microsoft HCS&nbsp;solution.&nbsp;In this case, a StorSimple CiS system, which is iSCSI-based,&nbsp;integrates with Windows Azure Storage, which is object based. &nbsp;</p>
<p><a href="https://msdnshared.blob.core.windows.net/media/TNBlogsFS/prod.evol.blogs.technet.com/CommunityServer.Blogs.Components.WeblogFiles/00/00/00/97/25/6036.data%20translation%20blocks%20to%20objects.PNG" original-url="http://blogs.technet.com/cfs-file.ashx/__key/communityserver-blogs-components-weblogfiles/00-00-00-97-25/6036.data-translation-blocks-to-objects.PNG"><img style="margin-right: auto; margin-left: auto; display: block;" src="https://msdnshared.blob.core.windows.net/media/TNBlogsFS/prod.evol.blogs.technet.com/CommunityServer.Blogs.Components.WeblogFiles/00/00/00/97/25/6036.data%20translation%20blocks%20to%20objects.PNG" original-url="http://blogs.technet.com/resized-image.ashx/__size/550x0/__key/communityserver-blogs-components-weblogfiles/00-00-00-97-25/6036.data-translation-blocks-to-objects.PNG" alt="" border="0" /></a>Obviously, a data translation process&nbsp;turns block data into objects. This happens&nbsp;during a data deduplication process, when&nbsp;incoming data exits the input queue in a CiS system. The deduped block objects in a CiS system are called fingerprints and have object properties such as being&nbsp;content-addressable and immutable. From that point on, block data is&nbsp;managed&nbsp;as objects, whether it is&nbsp;on-premises or&nbsp;in the cloud. In other words, the Microsoft HCS solution is a hybrid&nbsp;object&nbsp;store&nbsp;for block data. There are a lot of benefits to working this way, including:</p>
<ul>
<li><strong>Automated off-site data protection and access</strong>.&nbsp;Fingerprints are protected and tracked off-site automatically. Fingerprints suppors&nbsp;backup, DR, archiving and capacity expansion.&nbsp;&nbsp;</li>
<li><strong>Automatic replication</strong>.&nbsp; That&#8217;s a service provided by Windows Azure Storage to protect fingerprints against cloud disasters.</li>
<li><strong>Seamless scaling</strong>.&nbsp; Fingerprints are migrated to Windows Azure Storage, one at a time,&nbsp;using&nbsp;the same name as on premises. There is no getting lost in translation.&nbsp;</li>
<li><strong>Metadata-based storage&nbsp;management</strong>.&nbsp; Multiple storage functions are linked to single, replicated fingerprints. Backup, DR, archiving and capacity scaling&nbsp;all use the same&nbsp;fingerprint objects. Metadata is changed instead of copying data&nbsp;again and again for different purposes. For instance, migrating data to the cloud is usually a metadata change that doesn&#8217;t actually move data.</li>
<li><strong>Data portability</strong>. Metadata plus fingerprints form a portable, deduped block data system that can be rehydrated anywhere there is a CiS system. DR is location-independent.</li>
<li><strong>Deterministic, thin recoveries</strong>. DR is application-driven and only downloads the data that applications need, as they open files. There is no waste of resources in the network or at the recovery site dealing with the large amounts of data that aren&#8217;t needed to recover.</li>
</ul>
<p>When you look at solving the most vexing problems in your storage environment, especially data growth,&nbsp;backup data protection and the inability to test DR plans, the benefits of a hybrid&nbsp;object storage architecture&nbsp;are indeed powerful.&nbsp;&nbsp;</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
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